


Olive Branches

by beccabuchanans (vestigialwords)



Series: Olive Branches Universe [1]
Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Institutional sexism, Missionary, Misunderstandings, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Spanking, Unprotected Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Wall Sex, alcohol consumption, feels af, if you have a drowning phobia please see warnings on chapter 3, kiiiind of dom/sub dynamics dude idk, light language kink, praise kink but not in the direction you assume, safe-ish sex, the trio of Steve Javi and Reader is HR's worst nightmare, thigh riding, threatening your friends as bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24046090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vestigialwords/pseuds/beccabuchanans
Summary: “What thefuckwas that, Carrillo?” Your face twists into a snarl as you round on him the second you step out of the SUV. Peña had insisted on driving back to base and for once you were grateful, because you spent the whole ride back from the warehouse vibrating with rage. You had to literally sit on your hands, and Javi hadn’t once tried to pierce the crackling silence radiating from you the entire hour back to Medellín.
Relationships: Horacio Carrillo/Reader
Series: Olive Branches Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822000
Comments: 12
Kudos: 121





	1. Olive Branches

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I know I’m not gonna fool you with “enemies” in the first part. It’s a dance and we both know the drill. In this AU, Carrillo is not married because he wasn’t a real person so I do what I want. Betaed and idiot-checked by [hvngryheart](http://hvngryheart.tumblr.com). Any dumbassery that remains is solely mine. Also posted on my tumblr [HERE](https://mandoplease.tumblr.com/post/617405060551475200/olive-branches)

“What the _fuck_ was that, Carrillo?” Your face twists into a snarl as you round on him the second you step out of the SUV. Peña had insisted on driving back to base and for once you were grateful, because you spent the whole ride back from the warehouse vibrating with rage. You had to literally sit on your hands, and Javi hadn’t once tried to pierce the crackling silence radiating from you the entire hour back to Medellín.

Carrillo holds steadfast as you stalk toward him, arms folded behind his back in an approximation of parade rest, his jaw clenched. The space between you stretches taut like a rubber band with each step you take closer to him. He tilts his head back to look down his nose at you. It’s a tic of his, your rational mind attempts to reason, born from staring down gangsters and killers on their home turf, but never in your life have you been more tempted to smack anyone than this precise moment.

“I’m not the one who exposed my own position out there.”

Your fingers curl into fists at your sides, nails digging half moons into your own palms. Breaking cover hadn’t been your smartest move, but in the moment you had been blind. When the gunshots started to ring out, the only thought in your mind was the grotesque shape his body took as he dropped during a raid five days ago, stray bullet burrowing deep into his kevlar. Sprinting to the next vantage point before Trujillo signaled had been a mistake, you’ll admit, and the brass was almost certainly going to slap your wrists raw tomorrow morning. Today though, there had been no friendly fatalities, Colombian or American, which is more you can say about many operations you’d been on lately.

“I can’t do my fucking job if you change tactics halfway through a goddamn raid.”

“We always knew it could go that way.” His words are level and measured, but the space between you warps and stretches, creaking with tension that settles heavy and dark. This is a dangerous calm you’re challenging, the stillness of a man composing himself against the simmering violence that pulses under his skin and you almost strain to inhale the thick air that crackles around you both. “That’s why we had a briefing beforehand.”

“Don’t condescend me, you prick,” you snap. His lip twitches, a hint of fury threatening to snap his facade, and you have to stop yourself from howling with victory. Instead you jam a crowbar into the crack in his foundation “You cut your goddamn comms.”

“What was I supposed to do? Announce my plans three meters from a room full of sicarios?”

“Obviously not, but—”

“But, what?” His jaw is tight, nostrils flaring around angry exhales.

“The fuck is your problem?” Javi wedges his shoulder between you and Carrillo, snapping the straining cord linking the pair of you. Javier turns to you and waves his finger in your face and your rage ricochets, wedging itself deep in a wild desire to grab his index finger and snap it out of the socket. “We’ve all seen you nail center mass at five hundred yards. No one’s patronizing you. That was stupid. Own it.”

“Fuck you, Javi”

“Grow up,” Peña snaps and he may be right but you could fucking strangle him for it. He rounds on Carrillo next, presses a shove to his chest. “And you—she’s not wrong. You went in blind with no cover and nearly blew the whole op. If you can’t use your damn words, you need to figure something else out because I swear to God, if either of you pull that shit again, I will let you both get shot and I will _not_ feel bad about it.”

* * *

You take out your frustration on the paved track circling the base. You’ll owe Javier and Steve each at least a week of paperwork for taking over documentation on today’s clusterfuck, but right now you can’t bring yourself to care. The prospect of sitting inside, at your shitty borrowed desk, not ten feet away from Carrillo sets your skin crawling so bad that you’re barely even bothered by the suffocating Colombian humidity as your feet beat against the worn asphalt. You offer a lazy salute to Murphy as he leaves in time to meet Connie for dinner, and by the time Javier’s driven away as well, you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve passed the flagpole at the entrance to the compound. You give it a few more laps, and as you step off the track the sun has set over the mountains in the west and the training yard is deserted.

A rainstorm sweeps through Medellín on your drive home, and by the time you stuff your face with lukewarm leftovers and step out of your shower, it’s brought with it a merciful break in the heat. You crack your window open to let the cool night breeze sweep through your apartment.

You place a mug of steaming tea on the side table next to you and settle into the couch. You’ve changed into a camisole and a pair of cotton sleep shorts and let your tired muscles sink comfortably into the cushions. The sofa is worn and familiar, and older than you by far. It had followed your family through move after move as your father was transferred from military base to military base during your childhood, but its latest trip had been its longest journey yet. The rightmost cushion had been “yours” for as long as you can remember. You’d lost count of the number of times you’d evicted your siblings through force or coercion, but they had all agreed you should take it when you got your posting to Colombia. It’s the one thing you brought from home, everything else in the apartment cool and impersonal, filled up using the DEA’s meager furnishing budget.

The worn novel on the armrest quickly sucks you in and you’re hardly sure how much time has passed when you’re shaken back into the real world by the harsh buzzer of your apartment. It’s an ugly, demanding sound and you nearly jump out of your skin as your eyes dart up to the clock on your wall. Not many people knock on your door at ten at night, and all of them have keys to the building.

Or rather, _should_ have keys to the building.

You replace the book on the armrest and stretch as you pad the four steps from your couch to the intercom and reach for the talk button.

“Lock yourself out again, Javi?” You release the button, bracing yourself for a snide remark or some slurred half-English half-Spanish that you have to untangle and censor before a coherent message blooms out of the obscenity. Instead, the voice that crackles through the shitty speaker is sober, laced with amusement, and very, very much not Peña.

“Does that happen often?”

_Shit._

“Carrillo, what are you doing here?”

“Let me in.”

“Why?”

There’s no response, but you can’t conjure a good reason why not, so you sigh and press the button to unlock the front door of the building. A minute passes, and you put your half-empty mug in the sink. Then another, which you use to replace the bookmark snug into your paperback. And another, which you pass wondering whether he’d gotten lost; it’s not a large building. In fact, you had just started to figure he’d changed his mind about coming upstairs when you hear a gentle knock at the door.

He’s standing in the hallway in a pair of khakis and a white polo shirt, somehow looking even more like a goddamn cop out of uniform, a sealed bottle of deep golden liquid sloshing loosely at his side. He holds it out to you and you take it from him, a surprised huff of laughter escaping you as you run your thumb over the label—an arching olive tree overlaid by delicate lettering.

He rubs the back of his neck in silence and looks at the floor. He’s not a small man by any measure, but there’s something about the way he holds himself, cautious, vulnerable, and almost embarrassed, where he seems to shrink into himself in front of you.

You drink in the sight of him like you do when you’re pretty sure he’s not paying attention to you. His tight polo clings to his shoulders, still damp from when he must have gotten caught in the downpour earlier. A dark shadow of chest hair peeks out from under his unbuttoned collar and you fail to stop your tongue from darting out to wet your lips. Almost as if he feels your eyes on him then, his gaze blazes a trail up your legs, your waist, to your chest, settling steady at the deep neckline of your top. He must catch himself lingering then, because his eyes snap to your face, almost panicked. His chest heaves, and when your eyes connect with his, they’re practically blown black in the dim light.

_Oh._

“Tell me to leave, and I swear that I’ll pretend I was never here.”

His words send a shiver of warmth through your body that settles deep in your belly, and suddenly the absolute last thing you want in the world is for him to walk away.

You take a step backward, an invitation, and he’s on you the instant his foot crosses the threshold. His mouth crashes into yours and a gasp escapes your mouth as he darts his tongue out quickly against your lips. Your jaw drops open for him and you can’t stop the moan that escapes as he presses insistent into your mouth. It’s about all you can manage to keep breathing with his body pressed so close to yours.

Somehow you have the presence of mind to put the bottle down on the table next to the door as he crowds you back another step. His palms are warm against your cheeks as his thumbs settle in the dip between your chin and your lower lip. He kicks the door shut behind him and it slams, a finality to it.

_This is happening._

He presses you back into your apartment, retracing the steps you took to the door from your couch, until you have nowhere left to go but to sink back against the cushion, still warm from earlier. You expect him to join you, to feel the dip of the cushion next to you spill your body closer to him just like so many high school sweethearts had done many years ago. Instead he bends at the waist, his left hand landing on the cushion over your right shoulder, cornering you deep against the high armrest. Your eyes go wide when his right hand settles at your throat, thumb tracing small circles against your pulse before sweeping up to settle just under your chin.

You arch into him, back bowing at the sharp pressure against the soft flesh beneath your chin and you can’t contain the gasp that escapes when he presses harder, tilting your head back toward the ceiling. It’s almost--almost--humiliating, how easy you abandon all of your earlier fight to let him manipulate you to his advantage, but when you look up to study his face, he’s not proud or smug--just focused.

He dips his head and licks a wet line up your neck from shoulder to jaw, teeth sinking gently into the sensitive skin just beneath your ear. The sound that escapes your mouth is shameless, and the way your legs widen to let him draw even closer to you is even more so.

He sinks to the floor in front of you and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the inside of your knee. His palms skim up the inside of your thighs, thumbs swipe over the crux of your thighs, unbearably close to where you’re desperate to have him. At the last second he swerves, hands burrowing into the cushion beneath your ass and fingers hooking in the elastic waistband of your shorts. His mouth presses hot and open against the meat of your thigh, and you jolt, powerless, overcome with the need to rub your legs together for friction, for anything to ease the tide of desperation rising within you. You keen, tossing your head back against the cushions, but his shoulders assert themselves solid and strong between your knees.

“ _Look at me_ ,” his voice laced with the same authority you’re used to crackling in your ears over comms, and part of you bristles with the desire to be a little shit, to squeeze your eyes shut and disobey, just to provoke him. But something about his voice is unfamiliar, and that minuscule detail tunes your attention to his face hovering centimeters from the soft fabric of your shorts. He looks up at you through dark lashes, a question in his eyes.

You don’t need him to say anything. You just slide your knee up his arm to his ear, using his shoulder as leverage to lift your ass off the couch. He takes his cue, draws your shorts and panties down in one swift motion. Barriers vanquished, his hands return to your ass, fingers tightening into the flesh as he yanks you to the edge of the couch—toward his face.

He wastes no time, tongue licking a thick stripe through your wet folds to your clit, pressing hot against the bundle of nerves he finds waiting for him. One of his hands leaves your ass and folds into the narrow space between your cunt and his chest. His fingers gather some of the wetness gathering at his chin and your back arches as a heavy finger penetrates you to the knuckle. It’s joined quickly by another as his tongue laves a tight circle around your bud.

He curls inside you, fingertips brushing against something bright and impossible inside you. Your hips buck of their own accord, grinding mindless and desperate against his face, voice torn from your throat in a wordless cry. Without his grip, without his steady presence giving you an anchor to push against, you’d slide off the couch onto the floor but your body has long abandoned any sense of self-preservation in the wake of his assault. You moan at that thought, the realization that you trust this man to hold you, to keep you safe under the onslaught—as true here as on the battlefield. His lips curl into a smile against you and he slides his entire forearm under your ass, hauling you closer to his mouth.

Something you’ve always known about Carrillo is that once he makes up his mind he doesn’t hold back. His single-mindedness is infuriating when you and Peña are trying to convince him to abandon a search, or when an interrogation isn’t bending quite the way he expects that it should. For the life of you right now though, you can’t remember why you ever once complained. You toss under the heat of his tongue dipping to join his fingers as they stroke against that bright spot inside you, then sweeping up to lap at your clit. Suddenly his tenacity is goddamn everything.

It isn’t long until you’re soaring, bent in half and writhing on your own couch as his broad shoulders pin your knees obscenely up toward your ears. You should feel helpless, held prisoner by this merciless man capable of casual violence and even cold cruelty, but somehow that just urges you higher as he buries his face into your core, consuming, devouring. The wave of your orgasm crests as you thrash against the powerful grip holding you down; soft whispers coaxing you through the aftershocks as you shake against the solid mass of his chest.

Your body goes limp in his arms and he surges up to crash his mouth to yours again. His jaw glistens with your slick and when he swipes his tongue between your parted lips, fucking warm into your mouth just like you did your cunt, the taste of you thick on him. He groans into your mouth like a starving man desperate to consume every last scrap in front of him.

“Bedroom?” he rasps, breaking the kiss and pressing his forehead to yours, palms settling under your thighs.

“At the end, on the right,” you manage when words return to you, gesturing vaguely at the dark hallway behind you. You bury your face into the crook of his neck as he gathers you easily into his arms and carries you deeper into your apartment. His arms fit snug around your lower back, pressing your core flush against the strain of his erection against his khakis. You chase the sensation mindlessly, still buzzing, letting the coarse fabric slip between your folds and grinding against him, and he gasps high and sharp next to your ear.

The door to your bedroom is still mercifully open from when you raced out to work this morning, and he all but throws you down on your own bed with a groan. You bounce a little on the mattress and his eyes go wide, drawn like magnets to the way your tits bounce inside your cami. His hands reach toward you, but you push yourself up on your elbows and yank the thin fabric up and over your head, tossing it somewhere across your room. You let your knees drop open on the bed and in the low light that makes its way through your closed curtains you see his jaw drop open. A moment passes and he tilts his head back up to meet your eyes and there’s something desperate in his face, unsteady, unsure. After a lifetime of denial, resisting bribe after bribe, he stands like a man not quite sure how to partake in the temptation ahead of him.

For the first time, you let yourself look at him. Like, for once really look. You’re not fucking blind. You’d have to be to miss the way the thick cords of his muscles strain against the cruel confines of his uniform. He’s a strong man—his job requires it of him, wreaks hell on him for it. Scars lace up his arms—from knife blades, close shaves with bullets, and puckered skin where field medics removed shrapnel and cauterized the wounds because the nearest hospital was hours away even by helicopter. He carries the burden of his job on him always. You know this man. His body has been marred by the demands of his job, and he dishes back the brutality twofold.

And as he hovers at the foot of the bed, breathing heavily, all you can think about is how badly you need to know him beyond the bounds of his uniform, to know what his body can do beyond inflict pain. Still, he doesn’t move, hesitates, hands hovering at his sides like he’s waiting for you to tell him to leave, as if your spread legs weren’t invitation enough.

So it's on you to make the next move. It falls to you to launch yourself toward your nightstand, rip a condom out of the box tucked in the back of the drawer, and scramble back toward him before he can startle backward out of your bedroom. You kneel in front of him on your mattress and tug gently at the fabric over his stomach, pulling the front of his polo out of his pants. You can’t help the smile that spreads over your face when he reaches down cautiously for the hem. Not a grin—something softer than that, just the slightest curling of your lips. It’s enough to shake him out of whatever battle rages inside that busy mind of his. He strips his shirt up over his head so quickly you’re amazed it doesn’t tear, before burying his hands against your scalp. The pressure sends shocks of electricity all the way down to your toes and your eyes flutter closed as his fingers tangle in your hair.

You dispatch his belt buckle and shove his pants down over his hips, and they fall to the floor under the weight of his keys and wallet. He stands motionless in his tight boxers, a damp spot on the soft cotton where his cock strains against his underwear. It’s enough to make your mouth water, and you can’t help the sharp gasp that escapes you when you push the elastic down his waist to free him. His cock curves proudly up toward his stomach, thick and uncut and you can’t help but reach for him. His chin drops to his chest when you wrap your fingers around him and give a soft slow stroke. He’s like silk against your palm and you want nothing more than to feel him heavy in your mouth.

You lick your lips and bend toward him, tongue darting out to lap up the drop of precum gathered just under the hood of his cock, but the hand in your hair clenches and tugs, dragging you level with his face. You chase the tension as he pulls you taut, back bowed toward the ceiling, throat bare to him again in the easiest favor you’ve ever offered. He dips his face down, burying his nose into the underside of your jaw, draws a heavy breath and snatches the condom out of your hand.

“No,” he growls, thrusting into your fist still curled around him. “Can’t wait.”

A bolt of desire pieces through you, and some proud part of you would flush in embarrassment at the whimper that slips through your lips but your own dignity is the absolute last thing on your mind at this point. You honestly couldn’t tell if he shoved you then or if you fling yourself backward onto your bed but the net result is the same. You land against your pillows, open and obscene, and you crush the impulse to protect yourself, to hide, letting your legs splay out again for him.

He rolls the condom on quickly, then clambers up the mattress after you. His hands grapple up your legs, your hips, your breasts, gripping steady handfuls of your flesh and squeezing. There’s nothing gentle about the way he handles you, not that you were expecting it, and you can’t help but writhe beneath him, arching your body up toward his as his face finally levels with yours.

He grinds his hips against yours, pressing you back down to the mattress, cock slipping through your wet folds. His head drops and he groans into your shoulder, a broken sound amplified by the vibrations he sends coursing through your skin as he rocks himself against you.

Finally, he straightens up to his knees, hands firm as they lift your hips up off the sheets. He lines himself up with your entrance and looks down at you one last time. His mouth hangs open as though he’s trying to formulate words, to ask you a question, to—you don’t care. Instead you buck against him, whining as the tip of him catches against your clit, and that seems to be answer enough. You cry out as he presses into you, pushing the first few inches before gathering your thighs around his waist.

“Does that feel good?” his voice rasps in the dark, pressing slow and sweet until he bottoms out, hips flush with yours. There are no words for the way he feels inside you, throbbing and warm as he stills, letting you adjust to the way he’s torn you open. You’re pretty sure you lack the vocabulary in any of the languages that you speak to verbalize how exquisite it is to be impaled on him as he starts to rock his pelvis against you, slow, testing, careful, so instead of answering him, you clamp your eyes shut and press your body up off your sheets to meet his.

“Tell me,” he demands, and that part of you that made you step toe-to-toe with him in front of all of his men just hours ago refuses to submit again, instead crosses your ankles above his ass and pushes against him. The change in angle makes his cock brush up against something magical inside of you and the next thrust that slams against your hips threatens to rend you apart. The sound that rips from your chest is broken, barely human.

“ _Talk to me sweetheart_ ,” he rasps, hands tight at your waist. “ _I need to hear you._ ”

His fingers press bruises into your skin as he plunges deep into you, hips crashing so wet and desperate against you that you have to throw your arms up to the wall above your head to brace yourself against him. The new leverage lets you push back against him and you bear down, clenching tight around him, just to be fucking mean.

“ _Tell me_ ,” he chokes above you as you arch up to meet his thrusts and it shoots through you, the realization—that’s not English anymore. It took you this long to notice the switch, his voice raw and tight above you, probably unaware himself of what he’s done. His breath comes out in a high-pitched huff as he meets your hips halfway, and it strikes you like lightning, the strange undercurrent flowing through his words, “ _Tell me, tell me, tell me—_ ”

It’s not an order. _He’s begging_.

“Shit,” your throat is dry, but you can’t bring yourself to care because as soon as you let the words flow out of your mouth his cock slams against that impossible spot inside you. “You feel so fucking good.”

He collapses on top of you with a strangled groan, forearms landing next to your ears as he buries his face in your hair. Every thrust drives you against his elbows and there’s absolutely nowhere to go. No slack, no space to slide up the bed to cushion the slow strong thrusts shredding through you. Nothing to do except wrap your arms around his back, cling to his shoulders, and _take it._

Except that’s not quite true. He may have pinned your body under his powerful chest, rendered you immobile, paralyzed beneath him, but you’re miles from helpless. He’s shown his hand, cards laying flat on the table, shameless and pleading with you.

The words flow out of your mouth so freely you wonder how you ever kept them at bay because once the floodgates rise, the tide is unstoppable. You find words for the way your body lights up, the way electricity crackles through your limbs each time he bottoms out inside you, how desperate and empty you are as he pulls out of you, clawing at the pulsing muscles at his back. How nothing in your life has ever felt as good as he feels inside you right now, devastating in the way he tears you apart from the inside out and the realization that you’ll let him do this again and again _and again._

Your second orgasm slams into you without warning, a blast of white hot light shredding every muscle in your body apart and back again a thousand times in the space of seconds. Your throat is sore and you must have been screaming to get so raw but all you know when you resurface is his voice in your ear, moans of desperation as his thrusts grow erratic, urgent, heavy body pressing you deeper and deeper into your mattress until he stills with a cry.

Outside, a police siren blares in the distance, tires squealing against asphalt around a tight corner. A few blocks away the rapid pops of a 0.38 pierce the cool night. Some glass shatters. A floor above you and an apartment over, a pair of voices shout indistinct profanity at one another. A door slams. None of it breaches the peace that settles through your bedroom. Carrillo pushes himself up and you both gasp as he slips out of you and settles against your pillows.

In the shadows, you prop yourself up on an elbow and run soft fingers over a patch of skin on his side, darker than the rest, bruised, an angry memento from the bullet taken to the vest just days ago.

“Carrillo—”

“Horacio,” he whispers, turning his head and running a gentle thumb along your jaw. “I think we are…” he trails off, either unsure or unwilling to finish his sentence. “-- _Horacio_.”

“Horacio."


	2. Amends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consequences, or something vaguely similar. Also posted [HERE](https://mandoplease.tumblr.com/post/619318347968954368/amends-olive-branches-pt-2) on tumblr.

The nondescript office that the DEA rented for you in Medellín is tiny, barely enough room for the three bodies cramped inside, let alone the caseboard on the wall and the ancient coffee pot tucked in the corner. Your workspace is shoved up to the edges of Peña and Murphy’s desks, and you drop into your rickety office chair with a huff and rub the last of the sleep from your eyes. Murphy closes the file he’s leafing through and holds it out to you—the morning wire reports from the American Embassy, the morning ritual. As you lean forward to take the folder, Javier glances sidelong at you, his lips curled into a barely-concealed smirk. **  
**

“Have a good night, sunshine?”

Your hand freezes around the file. “What?”

“We share a bedroom wall, sister.” 

“You were home?”

“Oh yeah.” His left eyebrow climbs into his hairline as he cocks his head at you.

“Fuck. I thought you were out—” 

“ _Nope_ ,” he pops the word through his lips.

Your mind scrambles through excuses like a spinning rolodex.

It was a one-time thing. (Except it wasn’t. Not that you and Carrillo had talked about it, but it’s your actual job to arrange clues into a coherent narrative, to follow the threads of supposition back to their logical conclusion. Judging from the way he had placed his given name gently between you in the darkness; from the lingering kiss he’d left with you before leaving your apartment last night—the one you can still feel tingling on your lips; the fact that he had scribbled his home address on the notepad next to your phone and asked you to come by after work. If he had intended it to be a one-time thing he’d done a horrendous job of it.)

It was a mistake. (Best you’ve ever made.) 

It won’t happen again. (God, you hope it does.)

“Who is he?”

_Oh, thank God._

“What?” 

“Is it serious?”

“ _What_?!”

“Who. Is. He?” Javier’s tone is cold this time, unfriendly, the question of an interrogator, not a friend. 

“Peña—” Steve doesn’t lift his head out of the report in his hands, his voice laced with warning. “She’s a big girl. It’s not our business.” 

“Look—” Javier holds his hands up in surrender. “I just want to make sure you’re being careful.” 

“Oh, from Mr. ‘I-Fuck-My-C.I.s’? That’s rich,” you snort into your mug, wondering whether it’s too early to sweeten it with a splash of the whiskey that lives in your bottom drawer when the phone at the junction of your desks starts ringing. Your hand extends for it automatically, but Murphy is faster, diving for the receiver like a man desperate for any excuse to exit the conversation. “He’s not cartel, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Are you sure?”

You almost burst out laughing in Javi’s face, “pretty sure, yeah.”

“You vet him? How can you know—?” 

“Peña, I swear to God. I’m sure.”

“Okay, fine. Just…” he waves his hands in the air indistinctly. “Remember that if you ever need anything.” 

“You’re right next door, I know.” It was the same thing he’d said to you years ago on your doorstep, when you’d first moved into the tiny apartment next door. Back then the words had been charged with innuendo, and you’d slammed the door in his face. This time though, his concern is genuine and it’s the only thing that keeps you from reaching across your desk and throttling him. 

“Okay.” 

Murphy calls your name, his Southern lilt exaggerated and placating as he holds out the phone with an apologetic wince. “It’s Bogotá. Noonan wants to talk to you.”

“Shit,” you swear as you reach for the phone. “What did you assholes put in your report?”

Murphy shrugs and Peña averts his gaze, suddenly enthralled in his typewriter as you lift the phone up to your ear. 

“You need to get your ass over to base and smooth things over with the Colombians,” the Ambassador’s voice barks in your ear before you even have time to finish your greeting. 

You reel back in your seat, your eyebrows jumping halfway up your forehead. You were prepared for a lecture about the importance of adhering to tactical plans, a recitation of agency protocols, a demand to prostrate yourself for your rash decisions in the field, for risking hundreds of hours and millions of dollars of training invested in you by the US government. Not... whatever this is.

“I’m sorry, excuse me?”

“You. Apologize. Today.” Her Midwest accent wraps frigid around the words she snaps into your ear. “I just finished reading your partners’ report that you decided it would be a good idea to pick a fight with the leader of Search Bloc in front of all of his men. So you are going to drive over there _today_ , tuck your tail between your legs and tell Colonel Carrillo that you’re sorry for snapping, and assure him that it won’t happen again.”

The memory crashes through you, tufts of dark brown hair buried between your thighs, broad shoulders forcing your knees apart, hot tongue prying you open while a pair of pleased eyes watch you fall apart. You shake yourself, trying to ignore the ache blooming in your belly, and do your best to play it off as disagreement. 

“Ma’am, I really don’t think Carrillo is going to—”

“I don’t care what you _think_ , Agent. We cannot afford to let this relationship sour. We lose Search Bloc cooperation and we have _nothing_. Do you understand? 

You sigh, “yes, ma’am.” 

She pauses for a moment, then, “what are you going to say to him?”

You glance up at your officemates. Steve rummages through his desk, making a show of searching for something at the back of the drawer. Javier has his ear cocked subtly toward you even as he pretends to read back the text on the letterhead in front of him. You whip the file in your hand at his head and he slaps it out of the air, his lips curling around a silent what the fuck?!

“That I’m sorry…” you grit into the receiver. 

“And?”

You cringe. It’s like being five years old again, your mother’s firm grip curled around your shoulders as she forces you to apologize for snatching a toy from one of your siblings. Still, you take a deep breath; you can do this. Worst case scenario, you drive over to the base, pull him into his office, explain the situation, come back and kill time with all the bullshit paperwork you owe the boys until you can drive over to his house this evening and laugh about it. 

“—and that I won’t do it again.” 

“Good. Take Agent Murphy with you.”

Your stomach drops. Steve has abandoned his search, ostensibly finding that one particular lighter from the pile you know lives in his desk and is doing his best to avoid your eyes. “Madam Ambassador, that’s really not nec—”

“That’s an order.” The line goes dead. 

A tight smile, a grimace really, pulls across Murphy’s face when he finally looks at you, and you can tell he wants to do this about as much as you do. 

* * *

If you hadn’t already known that Murphy was a married man, the drive out to Search Bloc’s base would have made it abundantly clear. He’s silent for the fifteen minutes it takes to drive across town, letting you stare wordlessly out the passenger window. He knows better than to comment on the way your leg bounces; knows better than to try distracting you with some stupid irrelevant small talk; knows to keep his goddamn mouth shut and to trail two steps behind you as you slam the door of his SUV behind you and stalk toward the building where Carrillo spends most of his time.

“ _I'm sorry, but Colonel Carrillo isn't available right now_ ,” the baby-faced corporal manning the front desk of the base informs you before you even get a chance to open your mouth. He gestures at the mismatched wooden chairs pushed up against the walls of the wide hallway that passes as a reception area. 

Steve sighs and slouches into one instantly and lets his long legs stretch out in front of him, shrugging the collar of his polo up to his ears to wait. You’re too wound up to sit still, doing your best to burn through energy by pacing the tiny space and memorizing the newspaper articles pinned to the corkboards lining on the wall. You’re only moderately successful.

You couldn’t say exactly how long you had been staring at a news clipping announcing the capture of some mid-level street dealer when Carrillo steps into the hallway with a sharp whistle, and beckons you back toward the bullpen. Behind you, Murphy leans forward onto his knees to push himself up. 

“I can handle this Steve. You don’t have to babysit me.”

“Sorry, no can do.” Steve shakes his head. “Noonan used that word specifically.” 

“What, _babysit_?”

“Yep,” he clicks his tongue in apology. 

“She doesn’t trust me to follow orders?”

“Nah, she trusts you to get the right words out.” He pauses to consider his words. “It’s uh, what you might say afterward that’s got her worried.” 

The growl of frustration high in your throat probably isn’t the most encouraging of responses, but you turn your back on him and stalk past the corporal’s desk into the bullpen. Carrillo is waiting for you at his usual work station, perched on the edge of his desk, hands braced against the tabletop. 

“What does the DEA need from me today?” His eyes dart between you and Steve, who settles behind you in a wide stance, arms crossed in front of himself. Carrillo narrows his eyes at Murphy and then returns his gaze to you. 

“I uh—”

“Hm?”

“I’m here to apologize—” you nearly choke on the words as they tumble out of your mouth. 

A storm of emotions rage across his face in the span of seconds. It’s rapid and subtle; you reckon you only notice because you’re prepared for it. Panic first, then anger, grief, hardness, gates slamming shut, defenses raised, and it takes all your strength to keep from reaching out to reassure him. But his eyes flash back to Murphy, whose sharp gaze you feel boring into the back of your skull. He relaxes somewhat with the realization that your partner’s ire flows toward you only. He must decide that this visit isn’t personal, and his expression finally lands on confusion. You press on, “—for what happened after the warehouse yesterday, when we got back to base.”

He adjusts in place, leans back and cocks his head at you, shifts his glance between you and Murphy. 

“For what happened… when we got to base,” he repeats slowly and you see realization dawn on him, when he raises an eyebrow at you. You expect him to have mercy, to jump in and wave away your apology, make this easy on you, but instead he waits.

Motherfucker. 

“So?” He gestures to the space in front of you. 

“I’m sorry,” you grit through your teeth, “for picking a fight with you in front of your men.” 

He nods his head slowly, as though considering your words, running his tongue over his teeth, letting the silence stretch between you. Murphy clears his throat, and you flick him the bird behind your back. 

“... and it won’t happen again.”

Carrillo just… stares. Around you, his soldiers bustle about their business oblivious to the tight silence warping the air at the center of the bullpen. The heavy clacks of typewriter keys to your left and shuffling papers to your right are amplified in the heavy tension surging between you. Then his eyes rake up your body in a familiar way that would have sent you into a simmering rage just twenty-four hours earlier, or had he been literally anyone else. An idea occurs to you, much more devious than picking a fight with him here. You mirror the gesture, lingering a beat at his belt buckle as a plan coalesces in your mind. He’s an observant man, catches where your attention has landed and he chuckles. 

“If I wanted to listen to bullshit, I would have stayed in Interrogation Room B.” 

“ _Hey_!” Murphy interjects, leaping between the two of you, his hands held out in an attempt to diffuse the situation. You’re honestly not sure what he’s reacting to. It could be the way Carrillo is glaring at you right now, eyes glinting with provocation. It could also be the way your jaw tightens and your shoulders square as you shift your weight toward him, as if you’re preparing to launch yourself across the divide and snarl something through clenched teeth that will lead to yet another exasperated phone call from the Embassy and land everyone right back in this exact spot tomorrow morning in some sick Sisyphysian struggle to rend and repair the DEA’s relations with the Colombian Army. 

Carrillo narrows his eyes at you, then turns to address Murphy.

“Tell your boss that I am not as petty as she thinks I am. I want Escobar more than she does.” His attention ticks back to you. “I’m not so sensitive to destroy a fruitful working relationship just because one American woman has a little bit of a temper—”

“—a temper!?”

Murphy coughs and you watch helpless as Carrillo’s lips shrug quickly downward, pulling down the sharp edges of a smile. 

Mother _fucker_.

Steve’s presence between you means that you have no choice but to just _stand there_ glowering at Carrillo’s smug expression, your breath flaring heavy through your nostrils. It’s not anger though, not really, now that you know what that face looks like in the soft light of your living room, in the shadows of your bedroom, seen it buried between your legs, twisted in pleasure and groaning against your neck. You have a plan; he’s going to pay. 

He must either see the resolve flit across your face or get bored with this game, because he huffs a quick breath and pushes himself up off the desk. 

“Tell the Ambassador that she can count on Search Bloc’s continued cooperation with DEA affairs.” 

“That’s great, thank you,” Murphy interrupts, clearly eager to escape the conversation. He thrusts his right hand between you again and Carrillo answers with a healthy handshake. Murphy claps his other hand on your shoulder, wraps his fingers around your bicep and digs his thumb into the pressure point under your arm.

“Hey, what the f—” you protest, your head whipping around to your partner. 

“Come _on_ ,” Murphy hisses under his breath, tugging you out of the room as fast as his legs will carry him. You almost have to jog to keep up with his long strides. “Before you say something stupid.”

You throw one last glance to Carrillo over your shoulder and the bastard has the gall to wink just as Steve pinches the nerve under your arm, misinterpreting your hesitance as obstinance. Murphy drives you forward, perp-walking you down the hallway and out the front door. He doesn’t let the iron grip off your arm until you’re both well outside of the building and all but shoves you toward his truck as though he doesn’t trust you not to fly back inside to go another round with the colonel. 

“Lord almighty, that was painful.” 

“You have _no_ idea,” you agree as he unlocks the passenger side door for you with his key. You climb into the car and reach over the gearshift to pull up the lock on the driver’s door. 

“Asshole didn’t exactly make that easy for you, did he?” Steve says as he slides into his seat, finally relaxed as you click your seatbelt into place.

“No, he did not.”

“Want a drink?” 

“God, more than anything.” 

* * *

You and Steve return to the cramped office a few hours later clearly to the left of sober, but Javier has the good sense to pull one of the bottles out of his own bottom drawer and catch up instead of commenting. For once, you’re grateful for the stack of mindless paperwork and filing that the guys have dropped in your inbox. It allows you to feign productivity while letting the memory of Carrillo’s self-satisfied smile simmer at the forefront of your mind. 

You have a plan to wipe that smirk off his smug face.

You finally tap out and leave for home at around four thirty. There’s only so much mind-numbing work you can handle in one day, and it’s not like you owe the agency time. Nervous isn’t quite the right word as you buzz around your own apartment, taking care of bullshit tasks like moving the leafy plant from the kitchen to your bedroom window for more sun, washing the dirty mug still sitting in your sink, and finally putting away that last load of laundry, but it’s not as though you’re calm either. 

You have a plan, but it’ll take a fair amount of guts to pull it off.

You slip into the dress that you dug out of the back of your closet first thing this morning. It’s nothing special, just a steady standby for first dates—a flowy thing that lets your skin breathe in the equatorial heat and highlights everything you love and nothing that you don’t. 

Javier is just walking into your building as you bound down the steps toward your car and lets out a low whistle as you blow past him with a dismissive greeting. His voice rings out after you as you climb into your car, something like _be careful_ or maybe even _have fun_ , but his opinion is perhaps the last thing on your mind. 

Carrillo’s house is halfway down a quiet block, and you park your car on the street nearby. It’s nothing huge, a small plot of land compared to some of the vast lawns you grew up around, but it’s neat and well-kept, meticulously landscaped, a fruit tree just beginning to flower out front. It surprises you, the care and upkeep this must take to maintain, though you suppose it shouldn’t. 

His front door swings open a few moments later, and you’re greeted with a burst of cool air mingled with a mouthwatering blend of savory spices from some local takeout. He stands just over the threshold in a pair of jeans and a grey button-down, hand towel flipped over his shoulder, handsome as sin, as a sly smile spreads across his face. 

“Here to apologize some more?” 

_Motherf_ —

You have a plan, and he couldn’t have made it easier for you if he’d tried. 

Your eyes narrow and you feel a thrill of power pulse through you when his confidence falters, his lips part in surprise at the brutal determination on your face. You step through his door, stalking him backward into his own house, swing the door shut behind you. It’s the same dance as last night, except this time in reverse.

“Something like that.” You back him up to the wall in his entryway, your hands gravitating instantly toward the simple buckle at his hips. Your nimble fingers flick the end of his belt loose and his hands fly to your waist, fingers pressing into the soft fabric of your dress. “If what's at stake is your ongoing cooperation in our joint ventures, I’m sure I could muster a much better apology.” 

Without warning, you drop to your knees before him, stripping both his pants and underwear down his legs with you, letting them pool at his ankles. You skim your hands up the backs of his thighs and nose past the hem of his shirt. He’s already half-hard in front of you and you can’t help but smile as you flick your eyes up to his face. He gapes down at you, chin fallen to his chest, and you can see the battle raging his mind, his hand hovering next to your ear—trapped between hauling you up off his floor and letting you continue.

You take the tip of him into your mouth and swirl your tongue around him, glancing up at his face for any slightest hesitation. The moment your eyes meet his, his head snaps back sharp against the drywall and that’s all the permission you need to relax and let him slip completely past your lips. 

He’s too much to take fully into your mouth, you realize as you press forward, skirting around the edges of your gag reflex, so you wrap your hand around the base of him. The groan that wracks his body sends shockwaves through you, and you relish the slide of him as he hardens against your tongue. You bob along his length, relaxing the back of your mouth as you let your saliva coat him, twisting your wrist with every fevered stroke. 

His chest heaves with the effort of holding himself still, and his reluctance is sweet, but you didn’t come here for caution. Your free hand skims up the outside of his shaking thighs, thumb coasting along his hipbone to the marled scarred skin you find under his shirt. You apply steady force with your palm, pinning him against the wall. He reacts exactly as you predicted he would—he’s a warrior by nature after all—resists your hold, bucking against the pressure, well past the point of comfort and your eyes well up with the effort of suppressing your gag reflex. 

He stutters wordlessly when he realizes what he’s done, flailing the hand next to your head in apology, as though collecting the resolve to stop you. Instead you let go of his hip and press his worried hand against your scalp and encourage him to card his fingers through your hair. 

His groan sinks through you thick like raw honey. Each desperate gasp escaping his lips shoots a thrill of rapturous satisfaction down your spine to pool deep in your belly. You have friends who hate this; this act being something done out of obligation. You’d be lying if you said you couldn’t understand where they’re coming from—you’ve had shitty lovers too. But as you suck gently on the tip of him and take note of how he slumps against the wall with a prideless whine, you can’t help but pity them for what they’re missing. The sheer power that comes from holding a man’s livelihood in your mouth and deciding exactly what pleasure he feels is unparalleled. 

You let yourself moan around him and you all but feel the crack of his head as he rolls it back against the wall. The hand in your hair tightens into a fist and tugs upward, voice high and cracked. 

“Come here.” 

You let him fall out of your mouth with one last stroke up his length and stand, a crooked smile blooming across your face. He palms your cheek with one of his hands, his fingers curling tight around the back of your skull to crush a bruising kiss to your lips. He flips your positions, pressing the wide open span of his other hand across your collarbones and shoving you against the wall.

He stands there a moment, forehead resting against yours as he collects himself. You reach down for him again, but he lets go of your face to capture your wrist, wrapping his hand tight around your forearm. 

A moment passes, his heavy exhales slowly settling, solid grip easing little by little until he releases you, lowering himself to his knees.

He skims his hands soft up the soft skin beneath your skirt. The dance of his fingers tickles against the sensitive skin at your inner thighs and you can’t stop the way your body jerks and twitches under the caress any more than you can help the squeak that bursts past your lips when his thumbs swipe beneath the thin piece of fabric separating your bodies. He chuckles low in his throat and he doesn’t have to say a word for you to know he’s found you absolutely soaked through your underwear. You look down just in time to watch his tongue dart out against the pad of his thumb before closing his lips around his fingertip. His eyes fall shut as he savors the taste of you. 

“Thought about that all day.” His voice crunches like gravel as he noses under the hem of your skirt to bury his face against you. His forehead falls against the soft pillow of fat at your lower belly and he groans, nose buried against your mound so impossibly close to your clit that the vibrations of his voice ripple through your entire body. His fingers curl into the elastic band around your waist, peeling your panties down your legs, jaw dropping open as you step out of the lacy scrap of fabric. 

His breath comes out in a tight whine, and when he tilts his head up to look at you, his dark eyes are wide and wild. 

“Goddamn it,” you reach down and fist your hands in the longer hairs at the top of his head and tug him up to his feet. You throw one of your knees up over his hip and thrust up against him, forcing yourself up on tiptoe when his right hand slides under your ass and hooks underneath to bear some of your weight. His mouth hangs open as he nuzzles at the soft skin under your ears, gripping at your bare ass under your skirt. 

“Are you sure—?” He’s hesitant again, voice soft and tentative, even as he grinds mindlessly against your stomach.

“Oh, my God.” You toss your head back with false exasperation, writhing against him again with any leverage you can find pinned between the solid mass of him and the wall behind you. “What else do I need to do to convince you?” 

He hikes you up in his arms and scrambles at your other leg until both of your thighs are wrapped solid around his waist, skirt rucked up between you, your weight borne entirely between his grasp and the sturdy wall behind you. 

His eyes pin yours as he pushes into you, steady, studying every twitch that passes across your face, watching how your eyes flutter shut as he fills you inch by inch. It’s not that you had forgotten the stretch of him, but the memory is nothing compared to the reality of being split open on his cock, only feet from his front door, mere minutes after stepping into his home for the first time. 

He gives a few experimental rocks against you, slow and soft, hot breath exhaled against your neck as he finds a rhythm. It’s a balancing act like this at first, and you squeeze your thighs around his hips, throw your arms around his shoulders, clinging tight to him because he’s the only thing there is to hold on to. His grip on your ass shifts and suddenly all you can do is cry out as his angle inside you shifts and slams you up toward the ceiling, piercing unbelievably deep. 

Something in him cracks as you cry out, clawing across his back, caught between madness and bliss and your mind goes blank in the onslaught. He crushes you against the wall so hard you wouldn’t be surprised if he’s cracked the drywall with it as he crashes his body into yours. A growl, low and dangerous, escapes his throat as he buries his face in the crook of your neck. 

“ _Had plans_ —,” he huffs with a frustrated snap of his hips. You cry out as he burrows into you with almost painful fervor. “— _Cooked for us_.” 

“Huh?” You were almost unsure that you’d heard him properly. That smell you’d dismissed on your way in, too distracted by his face, your plans, not takeout afterall, but home cooking. Labor. He could have wrapped his hand firm around your neck and squeezed with all his might and it wouldn’t have come close to the way your throat constricts when his words finally pierce the haze of your awareness. “You—?”

“— _Opened a bottle of wine_ —” 

Your head drops into your arms on his shoulders with a cry, turn your head to look at his face, even tug at his hair to get him to look at you. But he’s buried deep into your neck as he yanks you down on his cock over and over. 

“— _take you to bed and make love to you like you deserve_.” 

Your breath leaves you in a huff, half a laugh, half because it’s all you can do as he pounds your body ruthless into the wall. 

“Something else to apologize for, huh?”

He stalls, dick still throbbing inside you and groans, pulling out and dropping your feet unceremoniously to the ground. The loss of him is excruciating and cruel as your cunt suddenly clenches around nothing. He takes a step back from you and the whimper of protest that slips from your mouth is nothing you’ll ever admit to. 

“Turn around,” he growls through clenched teeth. You’re dazed, still collecting yourself on unsteady, uncooperative legs. When you take too long to react he yanks you toward him and spins you around, jerking your back flush against his chest with an arm around your waist and grinds his cock against your ass. Your head falls back against his shoulder and he takes the opportunity to scrape his teeth against the pulsing skin over your jugular.

His other hand skims up your hips to your back, soft pressure at first, gauging your reaction. When you don’t resist, the force multiples, bending you over his forearm until you have to brace yourself against the wall with your hands. You let your forehead rest against the drywall, arching your back toward his cock still pressed tight against your ass through the flowing fabric of your skirt. 

He leans away from you the slightest amount and you chase the pressure backward, shameless, as his hands shift along your sides until they curl possessively around your hips, squeeze, a silent command to stay put. His fingers reach out, rucking and bunching the fabric of your skirt up and up, until he flicks the hem halfway up your back. 

You gasp as the cool air of his home meets your bare ass, and you can almost feel the hot gaze he rakes down your back. He squeezes you, fingers digging into your sides, rolling and kneading the soft flesh exposed to him until one hand disappears from you. You pick your head up to look back at him and you have maybe a split second between realization and—

_Crack._

His palm lands sharp against the soft curve of your ass. It's not painful, not quite, but still your body bucks beneath him as a moan bursts from your mouth. You fall forward onto your forearms, cheek pressing into the wall with the force of his strike. Heat blooms across your skin as his hand soothes gentle over the spot where his palm landed.

Before you can recover, his foot nudges between your legs and kicks your feet apart into a wider stance, dropping your torso further down against the wall until you’re practically parallel with the floor. You recognize the technique—seen him use it to subdue countless suspects over the hood of his car throughout the course of your collaboration. You’ve used it yourself to ensure leverage over men nearly twice your size. It’s a surrender, to allow yourself to be manhandled into this position, there’s no mistaking that. 

You hear him shift behind you, feel the tip of him align against you, and he snaps his hips, burying himself to the hilt in a single swift stroke, none of his earlier hesitance. Your voice explodes from you in a cry as he fills you again, cock ripping against every nerve ending in your body. You swear you can feel him at the back of your throat as he bottoms out inside you, his hips crashing into the back of your thighs with an obscene slap. 

The sound that rips from his chest is intoxicating, low and filthy as he retreats almost entirely from your body before plunging back inside, again and again. Almost out of its own volition your body arches back into him, bouncing against him, and it’s wanton and shameless but you can’t bring yourself to care because you’re just— _so fucking close_ —just—

You shift your weight, take your weight off one of your forearms, freeing a hand to snake down between your legs, but before you can even gather your skirts up, he leans over you, shifting his hand down your hips to nestle hard against your clit. You nearly collapse when his calloused fingers swipe over the bundle of nerves hiding between your legs

He’s singular. He’s vicious. He’s divine. He’s incredible. He’s—

He’s tearing you to pieces and there’s no place you’d rather be. 

You swear your legs give out under you, the only thing keeping you from crumpling to the floor are his arms, his vice grip around your hips holding you flush against himself as he loses himself in your body over _and over_. Each punishing thrust slapping against your ass shoves you forward into the rough fingers rubbing tight circles around your clit and you’re trapped but also you’re flying, _soaring_ , your scream of ecstasy catching in your throat.

You come back to yourself pressed hard into the cool wall from cheek to chest, neck twisted around forcing your gaze over your shoulder. You can’t help but revel in how his face twists around the exertion, around the pleasure he’s taking from you— _that you’re giving him_ —as he stares down like a man possessed at the spot where your bodies are joined. 

Suddenly his eyes snap up to meet yours as though he felt you watching him and his rhythm falters, he freezes, eyes wide and startled as though he’s been caught doing something forbidden. 

“Take it,” you whisper and he chokes on a groan.

If you thought he had been fucking you before, it’s nothing compared to the way he slams his body into yours now. He pounds merciless into you and there is no stopping the wail that bursts out of your mouth. Every thrust shreds through you, raking raw through your sensitive core. If he had been anyone else, you might have believed without any regard for your pleasure, but as his pace crescendos, he shifts and searches until sparks fly at the edges of your vision, hammering into that oversensitive spot inside you as though he’s reveling in the helpless screams you unleash through his house. It’s almost too much, every muscle in your body aches and quivers with the effort of holding yourself upright, every nerve screams in overstimulation, but you would rather run headlong into a firefight without a vest, leap from a plane without a parachute, jump in front of a goddamn truck, would literally rather die than tell him to stop, until he finally yanks you back against him once, _twice_ , and spills inside you with a mangled cry.

He leans forward over you and presses a soothing kiss against the bone at the base of your neck, hands dancing gentle up your sides as he slips out of you. He flips your positions again and slides unsteady down the wall, gathering you across his lap so you’re not sitting on the cool hardwood floor of the entryway. 

“So uh,” you nuzzle your forehead against his cheek, “‘Apology accepted,’ or…?” 

He laughs, actually, out loud, and wraps his arms around you, turns his head to press a kiss into your hair, and it occurs to you that’s probably the first time you’ve heard that sound come out of his mouth.

“Apologize like that, and I’ll forgive almost anything.” 

Another moment of silence passes between you, but this time it’s a simple silence, still, peaceful, filled with nothing but your shared breath. Your stomach chooses that exact moment to remind you of its presence, and he chuckles. 

“Smells amazing in here,” you tell him with a smile as you shift to stand up. 

“My mother’s recipe,” he shrugs, pulling his pants back up, as if that’s nothing, as though passing off the credit to his _mother_ of all people was supposed to make the gesture any less touching. He holds out a hand to you and helps you up off the floor. He gestures to the bathroom on the way to the kitchen, pulling the soft fabric of your panties out of his breast pocket with a bit of a sheepish smile. 

You hover outside the bathroom door for a moment, folding the scrap of fabric in your hands as though considering, then tuck it back against him, arranging it just so just a triangle peeks out of his breast pocket, smoothing your hands over his shirt. “Keep it, for now.”

You don’t wait for his reaction. 


	3. Potential

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reader confronts a feeling or twelve. Also posted [HERE](https://mandoplease.tumblr.com/post/622484859714174976/potential-olive-branches-pt-253) on tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING FOR THOSE WITH **WATER/DROWNING PHOBIAS**!! Please proceed with caution. There is no actual, literal, or threatened drowning, but I rely very heavily on metaphors of drowning/being submerged etc. during the hot and heavy scenes.

There’s a draft as you wrap your arms around yourself and rub your hands along your biceps. In a former life, you might have considered it a warm night, but after bouncing around the tropics for the past few years, you’ve finally acclimatized to the heat. Still, every once in a while, a cool change will rip through the mountain peaks and deliver a heady melange of the familiar and the alien; crisp air like home, but all the wrong ingredients floating in the breeze.

You inhale as the wind gusts through the open window, sweet bouquet of flowers and damp soil mingling with some intangible energy crackling through the atmosphere that you can’t quite place. 

The digital display on Carrillo’s nightstand glares bright red—two-thirty in the morning—illuminating the matte black metal of his service pistol next to his head. There’s one to match stuffed in your purse at the foot of the bed. He’s still sound asleep, face down in his pillow, lithe body covered by the light sheets you had just kicked aside. 

You had found his undershirt lying in a crumpled heap at the edge of the bed, exactly where you dropped it a few hours ago after stripping it over his head. You had slipped it on as you padded across the room to the window. The soft white jersey fabric just barely skims the bottom of your ass if you’re careful about how you stand, but it’s enough for your purposes. Enough that you can push the curtains to the side to look down the street without worrying about anyone looking up to see you. 

It’s a quiet urban neighborhood, small front gardens, old and established enough that each home on the block has developed its own character over the years, but new, or more likely, _moneyed_ enough that the roads and sidewalks are still crisp, clean, neat and orderly. Cars line the street, wheels parked half up on the sidewalk. A tawny cat jaunts down the street as though the night belongs to her, sneaking under a fence across the lane. You’re thousands of miles from the place where you grew up, but the world outside has been slowly becoming more and more like home the longer you spend here

You had spent hours over dinner, and hours again sharing dessert and a thick port wine as the sun sank below the mountains in the distance. He had taken you to bed, arranged you in his lap and held your back snug to his chest as he took you apart with dexterous fingers. He explored the topography of your body inside and out, discovered the spots that draw a moan, a whine, his name torn from your throat. It’s his job to gather intelligence, to untangle and make use of it, and he does thorough work. He could have written a book about you.

Still, you’ve been in this position before, spent hours pleasing and being pleasured by a man, only to wake up to a stranger—a chill in the air where there had been radiating heat hours previous. As though they were annoyed that you stayed, that you had the audacity to fall asleep and take up space in their lives beyond the warm body they’d taken solace in just the night before. You’re not sure you could bear that look on his face. 

You curl your toes into the carpet of his bedroom and consider your options. He had bowed out of your apartment last night, maybe that was a hint. Your car is parked just beyond his front gate. A wild part of you considers the oversized purse on the floor behind you, the one you’d stuffed a change of clothes into before leaving your apartment earlier that evening. The denim shorts and thin white tank top folded beneath your wallet and keys feel beyond presumptuous now in the terrifying depths of the cool night. 

You could snatch it all up, roll out the second floor window onto the awning over his front porch and leave without risking heartbreak. You’ve made riskier jumps before, and at least he seems like the type to keep a well-maintained house. Those roof tiles would hold your weight—not a guarantee every time you calculate your own trajectory.

Then again, he hadn’t left your home without saying goodbye either. 

You hear a soft whistle behind you, and you turn to look over your shoulder. He’s awake now, propped up on his elbow and frozen, eyeing you cautiously as though you’re a wild animal fixing to bolt.

“Are you leaving?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No. Do you want to leave?” 

“No.”

He smiles, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders as the corners of his lips curl just barely upward, a small, relieved thing. You respond in kind, meeting his soft gaze until it burns and you’re forced to look away. The shudder that tears through you has nothing to do with the chill in the air, and you turn back to the window.

“It’s so peaceful out there.”

He shifts behind you, blankets rustling as he throws them aside. A moment later, he settles at your back, his chin on your shoulder, arms coiling around your waist. He’s a furnace against you, the comforting warmth of his torso seeping into yours. 

“That’s a dangerous thought,” he mutters into the crook of your neck as one of his hands drifts down, past the soft fabric of his tee-shirt up your stomach to sneak between your legs. He lets it rest there, still and steady over your mound as he trails kisses up and down your neck. The soft press of his lips and the intermittent scrape of his teeth ignite the nerves under your skin, precise shocks snapping down your back, to your fingertips, your toes. You could map the finest tendrils of your nervous system with pinpoint accuracy as he plucks the cords of it like a virtuoso handling his favorite instrument. 

Without warning, he crooks a finger against you, sliding wet between your folds. You cry out as he swipes over your entrance and up to press against the tight bundle of nerves above. 

You fall forward just slightly to lean against the windowsill at your waist, your fingers wrapping around the painted wood for stability, chin falling forward to your chest. He bends to follow you, face still buried in your neck as he eases his fingers into your body. One at first, then a second, the heel of his palm against your clit, slow and steady. His fingers curl firm against the soft flesh inside you that sends a shiver through your body, kneading soft gasps and whimpers from your lips. 

“Horacio—”

His cock twitches against your ass and he groans, straightening behind you. He ghosts his free hand down your spine, chuckling as you shudder and jerk under him, his feather touch strumming the sensitive reflexes primed in your back. His hand slips from you, and you turn around just in time to see him pull his fingers out of his own mouth with a lick of his lips. His face is deadly serious, but his eyes are smiling.

You’re not sure if you hear him or just see the way his lips wind around the words as his hands reach for yours, tugging you toward him, back to the soft bed still warm from his body. 

“ _Come to bed_ ” he beckons. “ _Come_.” 

He gathers you in his lap, hoisting one of your knees between his legs so that your thighs straddle one of his. He’s already half-hard against you, but his hands settle against your hips and _pull,_ dragging you down the clenched muscle of his leg. It’s an invitation, encouragement, and you can’t find it in yourself to deny him as you take over the rocking motion he started. It’s not nearly enough to satisfy, but the gentle tides of pleasure just beginning to spread out from their origin between your legs are pleasant, welcome, so you let them lap under your skin. 

Carrillo’s jaw drops open as he watches you, shifting his leg beneath you, surging upward to press against your clit as you grind yourself on him. His thigh slips easy between your soaked folds and he groans when he notices the slick trail you leave down his leg. You reach down for the hem of the tee shirt, preparing to pull it over your head with a calculated arch of your back. Instead, his hands wrap around your wrists, stilling you with the slightest shake of his head.

He rolls over and nudges you back onto the mattress, settling on top of you in the hushed darkness. The dark silhouette of him hovers above you, the heavy weight of his body pressing you comfortably into the mattress, grounding and tender as he rocks the hardness of his cock against your thigh. His lips trail down your neck, sweet and warm against your skin before skimming his teeth over your skin. Your legs fall open for him, again, like they always do, as though that’s their natural state whenever he’s this unbearably close to you. He gathers your knee and hooks one of your legs over his hip before letting go, trailing his hand down your face. 

His eyes are soft as he looks down at you, searching your face for something, the smallest hesitation, any indication you want to leave. 

“Will you let me make love to you?” 

_Fuck._

For a man who spends his days steeped in warfare, here, alone in the darkness, he exposes his vulnerabilities with breathtaking ease. Speaking, putting coherent words to the swell in your chest, is impossible. Instead, you weave your fingers together at the back of his head and drag him down to meet your lips. It’s new, your coupling, and in many ways your bodies are still strangers to one another, but the way his lips fit against yours, tongue sweeping into your mouth like he’s forever savoring the taste of you, harsh stubble on his jaw just starting to rub against the the tender skin of your face, feels familiar, safe.

He shifts between your legs, pulls your hips up off the mattress briefly as he pushes into you, a ragged moan rumbling up through his chest and landing heavy in your belly. 

There’s no time to adjust when he bottoms out. His hunger for you finally bubbles over, a desperate keen rushing from his lips at being buried in the tight heat of you. Still, there’s nothing special or fancy in the way he moves on top of you, inside you. No practiced snap of his hips to jolt the depths of your core, no athletic contortion of your body into any unlikely shape other than the one you unfold naturally against him. His movements are simple and honest as he presses himself into the sweetest corners of you. 

_Gentle_ is the wrong word. You never lasted long with lovers who treated you like you were fragile anyway, like a thing easily broken. You’re not delicate—he’s seen you take too many hits, limp off too many nasty falls to think that he could hurt you in the safety of his bedroom. He knows he doesn’t need to be cautious with your body, so his thrusts tumble one into the next, merging and surging together, flowing over you like waves on the open ocean until you can’t tell where one ends and the next begins. 

_Consuming_. 

You’re lost, the scalding heat of him swells over you, dissolving what few defenses you had left, somehow feeling even more exposed despite the shirt separating your bodies. He’s inside you and all around you and everywhere all at once. 

You rake your hands down his back, not scratching, but a firm pressure that makes him groan as he gathers your other thigh to his side, his hands dancing up and down your sides as he holds you open beneath him

Your eyes are clenched shut, you realize suddenly, so you pry them open to the solid mass of his chest shifting above you, rocking you steady like a boat in the tide. You clench your abdomen, curl up to look down to where your bodies are joined. Between the angle and the darkness of his bedroom, you can’t see much beyond the suggestion of him disappearing deep into you, but as he crashes against you again and again, the borders of you bleed away into nothing. This man is becoming part of you and it’s terrifying and wonderful all at once. You fall back against the pillows with a cry.

He meets your eyes, studies as the fine muscles in your face twitch and strain around your broken sobs, eyes feral and flashing as they connect with his dark gaze, blown nearly black as you writhe under him. 

You’re shaking, almost _seizing_ as the waves surge through you, convulsing not in agony but blinding rapturous pleasure. Your body is nothing but an exposed bundle of raw nerves quivering beneath him, messy and shattered, but he gapes down at you like he’s never seen anything so sublime.

“What are you doing to me?” Your voice rasps, grating through your tight throat. 

Dragging you under, rolling you in a riptide, powerful current tearing you beneath the surface, flushing you out to sea, and you don’t fight it for a second.

“Is it good, _corazón_?”

Your breath leaves you in a sob as you wind your arms under his, clutching at his chest like a life preserver against the steady crash of his body against you. His hands snake under the knit fabric of the tee-shirt, rucking it up over your belly as his face falls into the junction of your shoulder. 

“Tell me, honey,” his voice vibrates into your neck, tongue laving at the skin as he rocks into you. “Please tell me.” 

“Yes,” your breath leaves you in a huff, “ _Horacio_.” 

You’ve always heard that drowning victims experience a moment of euphoria in the blissful moment they stop struggling, when they stop fighting instincts and let their lungs fill with water. It always seemed unlikely to you, but in this moment, clutching the shifting muscles of his back, welcoming him inside you and submitting comfortably to the cresting waves, you understand what it must be like to succumb, surrounded, full, powerful ecstasy roiling hot and wild with every relentless roll of his hips into yours. 

You surface a few moments—and an eternity—later to the last stutters of his hips pulsing hot inside you. His weight settles heavy and warm on top of you, a solid anchor to the bed, to this room, this house, this place. You’re both a mess, trembling and covered in a sticky sheen of sweat and cum, but he clings to your body like you’re the one thing holding him afloat.

He helps you clean up first, when breath and thought return. He watches, transfixed as you jolt through the soft aftershocks as he passes a warm washcloth between your legs, until you’re forced to bat his hands away. The rag is quickly tossed into his hamper and before you can wonder what he expects from you next, he tugs you back into the tight embrace of his arms. 

As you lay in the early morning shadows, sleep lapping at the tranquil pools of your consciousness, the musk of sweat and sex mixing in the cool air, that last elusive piece of the puzzle comes to you— _potential_. 


	4. Definitions

Music filters out of the tinny speakers mounted on the wall in the corner; a song warbles indistinctly beneath the warm din of patron chatter. The air reeks of stale beer, sharp spirits, savory spices, and fried batter as you shift toward Murphy to allow the waitress space to access the tabletop. The tiny circular table sitting between you and your coworkers wobbles as she transfers three light lagers and a massive platter of fried plantains from her tray to the center of the table. Javi nods his thanks as you distribute the bottles among your coworkers.

It’s been a long day.

They all are, for one reason or another, since the DEA transferred your permanent base to Medellín. There are the days that overflow with terror, when adrenaline alone sustains your body through a numbing sequence of near-death encounters. Even worse are the days like today—listless, sluggish eternities where you languish at your desk inside your drab, lightless office, sifting through endless financial records and wire reports. These days, you clench your teeth and talk yourself down from murderous fury as the leaky faucet of Javier’s plodding and unpredictable keystrokes slowly drives you insane.

Long day. 

Your left hand gravitates to the sore spot on your shoulder. The chair creaks as you lean back and roll your thumb against the pressure point just under your collarbone. You’ve lost count of how many times you’ve agitated that spot today—there’s a bruise there, and you wince every time your thumb digs into the tender flesh. Still, you can’t help pressing your fingers into the bloom just beneath your skin, because married to the dull ache is a deep echo of pleasure simmering low in your belly. You shudder with the memory as your own fingers ghost over the exact spot where Carrillo’s elbows had landed last night, digging deep as he rocked into you with enough force to shove a cry out of you with every thrust. 

“So what do you think Noonan wants from us?” Steve asks, shoveling an entire slice of the fried fruit into his mouth. 

Javier flicks his lighter and a cigarette blazes to life between his lips. He holds the mangled packet of smokes out to you, but you wave him off. He turns to Steve, who accepts the offer gratefully. 

“Well, at least we know we’re not gonna get our asses chewed out,” Javi says around an exhale of thick smoke, passing the lighter to Steve. 

“How do you figure?”

“If we were…” Javi jerks his head in your direction. “It would be me and her called to Bogatá. Not the two of us. No offense honey.” 

“None taken.” 

“Or Noonan’s testing her,” Steve supplies.

“What?”

“Think about it. We get called to the Embassy and this one here—” Steve jerks his thumb at you. 

“I have a name,” you grumble, wincing again when your thumb digs deep into your shoulder, but Steve forges ahead as though you haven’t spoken. 

“—gets left behind to rifle through Search Bloc files? Files that Carrillo has made _damn clear_ are not leaving his sight?” He turns to you and exhales a cloud of smoke. “She’s telling you to kiss his ass, kiddo.” 

“Yeah, that’s likely,” you scoff. “Think I should go above and beyond? Try blowin’ him?” 

“Might work.” Steve shrugs, knocking a column of ash off the end of his cigarette with his finger. The corner of his mouth quirks up into a wry smirk. “Worth a shot.” 

“On Carrillo?” Javi shrugs the corners of his lips down and shakes his head. “Nah, not the type.” 

“You sayin’ you don’t think I could—”

“Listen, sweetheart—I’m sure you have a trick or two up your sleeve that I don’t need to know about. But even I ain’t met a professional _that_ good. I’d tread carefully if I were you,” he warns. “Murphy’s right. Noonan will transfer you if you piss him off again.” 

“She’s not gonna—”

“She might,” Javi insists as he stabs a slice of plantain onto his fork, apparently convinced by Steve’s assessment. “We’re all expendable. The DEA’s relationship to Search Bloc is more important than any one of our jobs down here. I don’t want to see you go because well, I like you. Also, quite frankly sweetheart, you’re a lot prettier than any other DEA agent I’ve worked with.”

Steve scratches the end of his nose with his middle finger and your eyes narrow to furious slits as you try to decide whether snapping back at Javier is worth the effort. You massage a firm circle your shoulder absently and wince as the heel of your palm digs into the irritated bloom beneath your skin. 

“Alright, this is getting ridiculous.” Peña reaches across the table and hooks a finger under the collar of your shirt. The thin fabric of your shirt stretches as he jabs an insistent thumb under your collarbone. His and snaps back as you flinch, and his lips curl into a snarl. That shouldn’t have hurt you as much as it did—there’s no way to hide your reaction.

Suddenly it’s very much worth the effort.

“Oh, like you never leave marks on your whores, Peña.” 

“You have whores now too?”

You can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes your throat, “I’ll tell him you said that.” 

“Yeah, you do that,” Javier spits back. He sits back in his chair and chews his thumbnail, eyeing your shoulder with concern. 

“Seriously, sweetheart,” Steve drawls, exhaling a cloud of smoke and tapping cinders into the plastic ashtray next to his elbow. “This guy of yours—he treatin’ you okay?”

You narrow your eyes at him, and he raises his hands in surrender. 

“Look, if I ever left a bruise like that on Connie, I’d be groveling for a week.”

“I think you underestimate your wife, Murph. That’s a tough broad if I ever met one.” You grin around the lip of your beer bottle as his eyes go wide. “That woman followed you to Colombia in the middle of a drug war. If anyone is down for a little rough-and-tumble…” 

“Okay, _stop_ ,” Steve insists, jamming the stub of his cigarette into the ashtray. 

You throw your hands up in the air. “I didn’t start this conversation. Peña tried to take my shirt off.” 

“You _wish_.”

“I _really_ don’t.” 

“Okay, this right here?” Steve gestures into the crackling air pulling taut between you and Javier. “Is making me nervous. Are you going to be able to get through a week without antagonizing our Colombian friend?”

You sniff and take a swig of your beer, fixing him with a narrowed glare. “Probably not.” 

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

You chuckle, “I’m not going anywhere, Steve.” 

“No,” he agrees, “you’re not. Because if I’m ordered to babysit another apology, I swear to God I will kill us both. That was the most painful experience I’ve ever endured, and I’ve been shot.”

“You’ve been _grazed_.” 

“A bullet pierced my skin, did it not?”

“Children!” Javi snaps. “Can I eat my plantains in peace, or do I have to shoot you both?” 

* * *

The training yard bustles under the midday sun as you fork over your taxi fare and step out of the car, bag slung over your shoulder. You wipe a sheen of sweat from your forehead and wait as a group of cadets jog in formation across your path, rifles held to their chests. One of the soldiers slides his gaze across you, a quick glance up and down as he passes. You scoff. He’s a child, barely old enough to hold a rifle, let alone go to war.

“ _Eyes front!_ ” You snap at the boy. His head snaps back and he stumbles over his feet, nearly breaking stride as he whips his gaze back in front of him. Ten years ago, he may have turned your head as well, but as he shuffles away with the rest of his squad, you can’t help but feel like you’re witnessing a lamb get fattened for slaughter. 

The building door hasn’t even closed behind you when the sergeant manning the reception desk throws a sharp whistle down the hallway behind her. A moment passes as you scribble your name on the sign-in sheet. As you look up, Trujillo’s head pokes around the corner, and he gestures for you to follow him. 

There’s a pod of desks shoved in the corner of the bullpen where you and the boys usually work, though Trujillo goes through the charade of leading you over and introducing you to the space, as if to make a point. He holds out his hand, a jangling ring of keys dangling off his index finger. You take them, and he nods toward the filing cabinets pressed against the wall.

“Nothing leaves the room. Colonel’s orders.”

“Sir, yes sir,” you quip, clicking your heels and snapping a mock salute in the middle of the bullpen. Trujillo scoffs and shakes his head in amusement.

“Don’t think for a _second_ Colonel Carrillo doesn’t know how the DEA cracked the McPickle lead.”

“Understood, boss,” you nod solemnly. “Report for full cavity search before leaving base.”

Trujillo shakes his head. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Well,” you start, leaning in and nudging him with your shoulder, a conspiratorial grin spreading across your face. “It all started back when—”

“That’s great, I don’t care,” Trujillo snaps at you without malice. He claps you on the upper arm and shoos you with both hands away to the desk he’s laid out for you as though you are a persistent stray cat that won’t stop trying to get in his house. You flash a wide grin and a double bird as he saunters away from you, stepping carefully backward, with his arms outstretched at his sides. 

At first, there’s no method to your work. The first folder you pull from the cabinets follows you back to your desk, not for any good reason, but because it was at waist level and easy to remove from the overstuffed drawer. You’re not sure a more targeted approach would have made a difference anyway. The magnitude of the untapped well of information in front of you is practically overwhelming as you scramble through the tangled web for a foothold. Before you know it, you’ve amassed a growing wall of folders and envelopes on the floor circling your chair. Photographs and scribbled sticky notes litter the surface of your desk, but you have nothing to show for it other than a list of restaurants to try and the address of a reputable dry cleaner. 

You’re halfway through your second cup of coffee for the day when Carrillo sweeps into the room, a few corporals hot on his heels. You watch him stride through the bullpen—it’s almost impossible to ignore the cut of his figure as he bends the space around him, his men scrambling in his orbit. The building may belong to the Colombian government, along with all the files inside, but the men, the command, the very air is unquestioningly _his_ as he barks a crisp line of orders at each of his soldiers in turn.

Your lover lowers himself carefully into his desk chair and catches your gaze across the busy room. He nods once in greeting, curt and sharp. It’s the best he can do without drawing attention to himself as one of his secretaries bustles up to his desk with a stack of documents needing his attention. 

He’s at work, and so are you.

You drop your pen halfway through a halfway legible note scribbled on the yellow legal pad at your elbow and shake out your hand. Your knuckles crack from hours curled around the thin stick of cheap plastic, and you massage your eyes with the heels of your palms. Thankfully, the sun has shifted in the sky, allowing the temperature in the crowded bullpen to drop as the light pouring through the opaque windows to your right becomes less direct. Unfortunately, that also means that the incessant flickering of the fluorescent light above your head only asserts itself more and more with each passing second. You groan and dive back into the stack of photographs.

Something about this neighborhood bothers you, a faint tickle at the edges of your mind. There’s a piece that doesn’t quite fit, a jigsaw puzzle with decoy pieces thrown in, a long deep shadow when the sun is directly overhead, a joke passed in hushed whispers behind your back.

The scenes play out in front of your eyes. The neighborhood is middle income, safe enough—neither rich nor poor enough to draw significant attention from, well, anyone. Certainly not a place where cartel business is expected, but the anonymous tip had been logged all the same. The street life takes shape in photographs flipping past in front of your eyes like an old stop motion film. 

You can track the rise and fall of the day through the shadows cast by the buildings, can almost smell the sizzling meat of the street vendors, all but hear impatient horns honking despite the red light. At noon, a shopkeeper sweeps the street in front of her door, kicking up a choking cloud of dirt. At four, a pair of giggling sisters skip down the street, proud to be entrusted with the dinner shopping, heaping bags of tart fruits and crisp vegetables swinging from their wrists. Six o’clock, a couple steals a fevered kiss in a shaded alley. At dusk, a wrinkled widower sits on the stoop of the laundromat as he waits for his clothes to finish washing. He leans hard against a polished wooden cane, squinting against the glint of the setting sun as it flashes off a truck—

— _the truck_.

A photograph taken three weeks earlier chimes in your memory, a connection coalescing as though you’d pulled a buried cable from the sand. You shuffle through the stacks of glossy paper. The truck, parked outside the laundromat. The papers shift and slide through your hands as the pieces fall into place and the memories propagate, tumbling over one another again and again, the cord of realization flaring out in multiple directions as you slap photograph after photograph into the growing pile at your left. 

The truck. 

The truck. 

The truck. 

Like clockwork. 

You startle up as a heavy glass of scotch lands on your desk in front of you. Your head snaps up to look around the bullpen—now empty except for you and the man standing at the edge of your desk. Carrillo reaches over to the desk across from you and drags the chair across the floor. He flips it around and settles down into it facing backward, legs spread wide across the back of the chair. 

“Didn’t want to interrupt you,” he says fondly, taking a sip of amber liquid from the glass tumbler in his hand. “But I know that look. What did you find?”

You move the glass to the corner of the desk and fan the photographs across the desk in front of you. You tap each one in turn with the tip of your index finger. “Why would a laundromat need daily deliveries from an armored car?” 

He furrows his brow and leans forward to rest his elbows on the desk and stares down at the photographs. “Most don’t.” 

“Exactly.” 

He reaches across the table to examine one of the pictures, holding the thick paper up to the light to consider. A moment passes as he thinks, cogs slowed ever so slightly by the tendrils of alcohol lapping at the edges of his thoughts, but you watch as the realization clicks. 

“It’s a front?”

“It’s a front.”

“A laundromat?” he reaches for the next photograph, and squints at the glossy paper, a capture of two men unloading boxes off the truck bed in the corner. “Seems a little obvious.”

“Sometimes the best way to hide the truth is to scream it at people who aren’t listening.” 

He meets your eyes over the desk and studies your face. His scrutiny, once overwhelming and aggravating, washes over you as a strange comfort. He has a way of seeing things, reading people, noticing when something hasn’t been said, and for once you find you don’t mind. He sighs, then glances down at his watch and then taps the timestamp at the corner of the photographs.

“If we leave now we might catch tonight’s delivery.” 

You look up at the clock hanging on the wall. He’s right—it might be tight, but it’s worth a shot. You sling your bag over your shoulder and hold your hand out to him, palm up, eyebrows raised.

“ _Keys_ ,” you insist. He looks at you and raises an eyebrow, incredulous and stubborn.

“Is that your first or your second?” You gesture to the glass on the table, still half-full of amber liquid. He sighs and reaches into his pocket and dangles his car keys over your palm. 

“Do you know which one’s mine?” 

“Yeah, it’s the one with the shiny brass balls hanging off the rear hitch, right?” You punctuate your question with a suggestive wriggle of your fingers.

He freezes, expression caught somewhere between carefully blank and outright horror. There’s no helping the crooked smirk that spreads across your face so you don’t even try as a ticker tape stream of unspoken curses flashes across his narrowed eyes. He shakes his head without a word, dropping the heavy mass of keys into your hand and jabbing his index finger toward the parking lot.

* * *

He changed out of his uniform before leaving base, eschewing his uniform for casual wear to match your own. Still, the likelihood that his personal vehicle has been identified is high, so you’re forced to pull over several blocks away and hoof the last half-mile to the site. 

He startles when you wrap your arm around his elbow, but sometime during the second block he sinks into the charade. To the casual viewer on the street, the two of you are nothing more than a happy couple, out for a breath of fresh air. Little would they know about the pistol tucked within easy reach in your bag and one to match hidden in a side holster under the loose material of his jacket, not to mention the unassembled rifle tucked in pieces into the bag slung over your shoulder. You sway a little bit, putting on a show of being slightly tipsy, as though the two of you had just left dinner and were out for a breath of fresh evening air. 

Conversation streams easily. He lived in this area for a few years, he tells you. He regales you with stories about moving, how his parents had piled the family into his grandfather’s rickety old station wagon along with everything they could fit in the trunk, so that he and his sister could attend a good school in the city instead of the struggling town where he was born. 

“… And I shoplifted candy from that store once when I was a boy,” he points to a shop across the street. “My father didn’t speak to me for a week.” 

“You’re so full of shit,” you snort. “No way were you a childhood delinquent.”

“It was one time, and I got caught. I wasn’t very good at it.” 

“No,” you burst out laughing. “No, apparently not.”

A sly expression washes over his face, a hidden smile betrayed by the slightest divot in his dimpled cheeks. He glances sidelong at you. 

“I used to think about you, you know? On stakeouts, when things got quiet and boring.” 

“Yeah, well we were sitting in the same car. Kind of hard to ignore the only other human being—” 

“No,” he insists, arching an eyebrow at you. “I mean I thought about you.”

“Oh, you _scoundrel_ ,” you accuse, a delighted cackle bursting from your throat. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” he says, finally freeing the smile to shine across his face. 

“Okay, I take it back, maybe you _are_ a delinquent.”

He chuckles, deep and warm, as you round the final corner and the busy laundromat comes into view. You can’t risk getting too close, have to assume the both of you are known quantities to any major player in the game. A quick glance up the street and you spot exactly what you’re looking for—a dark alley and a fire ladder, tucked deep into the shadows. 

You jerk your head toward the shadows. “This one?”

He throws a glance of his own across the block, and you can see the calculations running in his mind, narrowed eyes at the building across the street, a minute shake of his head as he finds any other vantage point wanting. He shrugs. 

“Good as any.” 

You grab him by the collar and yank him into the shadows, ignoring the catcalls and whooping that your bold action triggers among passersby. Your back hits the wall with a thud, and you drag him toward you, your hands fisting in the collar of his jacket as his lips fall against yours. A stunned grunt escapes his chest, then a heavy exhale of his breath before he finally moves his lips against yours. 

But something’s wrong. Instead of sliding his tongue into your mouth, crowding you into the rough brick of the wall, he pulls away, stiff and awkward, his hands hovering just over your arms as though to push you away. He shifts in front of you a gentle shake of his head as though to admonish, his hands opening and closing helplessly at his sides.

“Was that necessary?” he asks. “We made a bit of a scene.” 

“Anyone spots us, tries to make it a problem, we tell them we nearly got made.” 

“But—”

Your nerves snap as he goes rigid in front of you. A cold front whips through your veins as though your blood has been flash frozen, like you were doused with a bucket of ice water. You shove past him toward the fire escape, jostling his shoulder with your own as you pass. 

“Balls deep inside me two nights ago and _now_ he’s shy about a kiss?” 

The first rung of the ladder is just above your reach, so you jump and pull yourself up the wall, climbing the ladder without looking back. You hear an aborted gasp of protest, your name tumbling from his lips as you climb over the edge of the building and cross the roof to peer over the edge. You don’t look back, can’t bear the discomfort on his face for another second. 

The rooftop is only three stories up, but it’s enough to give you a decent vantage of the shop front down the block, as well as some cover behind the brick lip at the edge of the building. You drop your bag to the ground and rummage around inside. Your hand curls around the camera first, and when you look up he’s joined you on the roof and is staring down at you where you sit. You hold the camera out to him and he smiles, tight lipped, the expression nowhere near his eyes. 

“The DEA doesn’t want to be in charge of intel?”

“Since when is that our strong suit?” You raise an eyebrow at him as you start to assemble the pieces of the rifle you find within. You load a few rounds into the magazine and look up at him. His smile has grown genuine now, the slightest spark dancing in his eyes. You return the gesture and shrug. “This is your mission, Colonel. I’m just the muscle.” 

He chuckles as he screws the long range lens onto the camera. “Could you remind your partners of this sometime?”

“What was it that I said earlier about intelligence?”

That earns you a bark of laughter as he settles next to you, a crack in the strained tension between you, and you take it as a win. 

It’s not dark yet, but the light is fading fast as the sun retreats behind the horizon. The safety of your rifle is still on, no bullet yet pumped into the chamber. It’s there for the scope mostly, but more if necessary. Carrillo sits next to you in silence as the both of you turn your attention down to the street below, staring through your respective viewfinders. 

The disquiet melts as you sit together in silence. Seconds turn into minutes, minutes into—well, _more_ minutes, until suddenly you realize that he’s shifted closer. He wasn’t touching you before, when he first sat down, but his knee now ghosts against your thighs, his upper arm brushes lightly against yours. 

“You know, that explains a lot,” you say, letting a sly grin spread across your face as a pair of women leave the laundromat with baskets of laundry balanced on their hip. He looks glances sidelong at you, brows furrowed. 

“What does?”

“I thought you wouldn’t look at me because you were annoyed about being stuck in a car with me.” He snaps his head up as if to interrupt your self-deprecation, but you shrug and forge on. “You wouldn’t be the first. But you’re telling me instead you couldn’t spend time with me without… what, popping a boner?” 

He ducks his head with a laugh, a snort high in his nose as you turn toward him and fix him with a grin. His attention focuses resolute down the camera and refuses to look up when you nudge him with your shoulder. 

“Something like that,” he says quietly. 

“So what did you think about?” you ask, returning to look down the scope. 

“What?”

“You said you used to think about me on stakeouts. What did you think about, when you lost control of your own mind?”

“No—”

“Come on,” you egg him on, bumping his shoulder with yours. “Tell me.” 

“I—”

“I think I deserve to know what kind of perversions my boyfriend harbors about his coworkers.” 

It slips out of your mouth before you can stop it— _boyfriend_. The word feels childish and stupid as splashes to the ground between you like raindrops on a tin roof, loud and impossible to ignore.

Carrillo goes rigid next to you and the air snaps tense, taut, crackling with electricity as you beg lightning to strike you down. You’ve lit a match and dropped it, the fuse flaring to life and all you can do is sit and watch and wait for the dynamite beneath your feet to explode. When you kissed him barely fifteen minutes ago, he had gone tight, pushed you away. It was a stark reminder that what you have is an affair, a surreptitious liaison meant to stay secret, buried in the dark of night, destined to end in heartbreak. You’re sneaking around, hiding in the shadows, covering your rendezvous like shame from your coworkers—your _friends_ —your family back home. 

Your entire body tenses, primed to flee, to flip off the edge of this building like so many superheroes from the worn comic books you read growing up. You feel his presence loom next to you, and his silence churns thick and weighty as you resolutely focus all your energy down the scope of your rifle. 

He opens his mouth to speak—and a truck pulls up at the front of the shop. You’ve never been so grateful for criminals in your life. 

Suddenly, your goals are clear. You’re working. You’re here to do a job, to gather intelligence. You steady your breathing as you watch down your scope, your mind racing to file away as much of the interaction as possible. Next to you, the camera shutter clicks in near-silence, snapping away as a trio of young men unload crates of purported detergent and heavy machine parts. Two of them look familiar, though you don’t remember the names associated with the grainy photographs pinned to the corkboard back in your office. 

Minutes pass, time marked by the steady click of the shutter and the winding of film until you hear the tell-tale clacking as the winder fails to load the next frame, having reached the end of the film strip. You reach into the open bag next to you.

“Another roll?”

“No,” he sighs. “Let me take you home.” 

“My apartment,” you insist. You can hear the chill in your own voice, almost cruel in its rejection. You really hadn’t intended to snap, but you’re tired, too exhausted to modulate your own tone anymore. “I want my own bed.” 

He tenses next to you, flinching in the darkness, but he nods. 

The ride to your apartment building is quiet and you count the streetlights as they pass. He’s deep in contemplation as he drives, his eyes focused hard as stones through the windshield. The silence lands heavy between you, warping the tight space until it floods the cabin with a suffocating whirlpool of dread that threatens to turn your lungs inside out as he drives up to your front door. 

“Sleep well,” he whispers, his voice cracking in the darkness. His hands grip hard around the steering wheel, and the leather creaks as he clenches his fists around it. Your heart drops to your stomach as you look at him, abject misery writ large across his features. You lean toward him, reaching out to pull him in for a kiss. He shakes his head but grabs your hand as you flinch away from him.

“Not safe here.”

“Come up then,” you say with unnatural lightness, unbuckling your seatbelt. “Peña and Murphy are in Bogatá for the week.”

“And Murphy’s wife?”

“Has no idea what you look like,” you shrug, avoiding eye contact. “Your secret will be safe.”

He exhales, annoyed as he glances sidelong at you. You can feel him looking at you, studying you, working to peel back the surface of you for the second time tonight. This time you don’t let him, instead clenching your jaw and staring dead ahead. He sighs. 

“I’ll be right up.”

He drives away the moment the front door of your building yields to your key. You climb the stairs to your apartment, set your bag down just inside your door. Childish impulses compel you to race toward the window—he’s nowhere to be seen, and neither is his car, despite long stretches of empty road along the curb, plenty of space to park. A pit opens in the bottom of your stomach, shame and dread bubbling up into your throat. It’s not exactly that you believe that he would abandon you so easily, but the ugly fear latches onto your thoughts all the same. 

The buzzer jolts to life, and you leap toward the intercom to unlock the front door. A moment later, a familiar knock sounds at the heavy wood of your front door and you throw it open to let him in. 

“You should have confirmed that it was me,” he says warily as he eyes the intercom, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on a hook near your front door. 

“I knew it was you.” 

“How?”

You sigh. He’s right—anyone could have shown up in the ten minutes he took between dropping you off and showing up at your door—an ambitious midlevel sicario eager to earn his stripes, a hired assassin, or even just an opportunistic burglar, taking advantage of the complacency of those who live in safer districts. It was a dumb move, but you don’t feel like examining the ways he makes you forget caution.

“What took you so long?”

“Parked a few blocks away. We can explain that I dropped you off at home. But that I parked overnight outside your building? I don’t think so.” 

“Don’t want people to know you’re fuckin the DEA, huh?”

It’s a joke, meant light heartedly to break the mood, but he doesn’t laugh. Instead his face hardens into tempered steel as he advances on you, backing you tight against your own front door. His hands curl around your skull and his mouth crashes against yours. It’s not a gentle kiss as he surges against your lips, not a comfort or an apology. It’s a vow, an oath, an assault so overwhelming that you almost feel the need to defend yourself against the onslaught. 

Or at least, you would have if he hadn’t set every nerve ending in your body ablaze, flames of longing licking through you, hot and consuming. When he finally releases your mouth, he takes your breath with him, and you gasp to reclaim the oxygen he’s burned away inside you. His hands fist tight in your hair and the firm grip at your scalp sends a bright white shock down your spine. 

“Stop that,” he snarls. “If I could, I would climb to the rooftop and scream for the world to hear about the fierce, brilliant, sexy woman who for some reason lets me into her bed.”

“Technically it’s usually your…” 

He growls, a low rumble originating deep within him, a dire warning originating somewhere base in his chest, primeval and _pissed_. Your mouth snaps shut. 

“My career would survive if my superiors found out. Might even get recommended for promotion if Jaramillo thought I would use you for information.” His grip loosens a little and his thumb brushes soft along your jaw. “Can you say the same?”

_Probably not._

The words pop in your head, but you can’t bring yourself to say them. 

He’s right. Your career wouldn’t survive if the DEA found out you were fucking Carrillo. Murphy and Peña wouldn’t give a shit, you’re fairly certain. They’d give you hell sure, you’d expect no less. Even Noonan might even cover for you if she’s feeling charitable, but if word ever leaked beyond her? You’d be screwed. The agency expects the boys to rollick, furtively condoning misbehavior even as the official line insists upon propriety. Peña gets away with shit because his encounters yield intel and the agency decides to look the other way. 

You don’t have that luxury. 

Worse, it wouldn’t end with you. Word got out you were fucking Carrillo, every active female field agent worldwide would be suspect. You’re not just you after all, you are all of them. The first whiff of compromise and best case scenario, you’d be yanked out of Colombia so fast you’d get whiplash, relegated to some backwater desk in Buttfuck, USA, chasing down high school potheads over goddamn dimebags.

He softens in front of you, pressing his forehead against yours. A moment passes, and then another, the beating drum of your heart synchronizing with the steady tick of the clock on the wall, dancing and twirling together until they thrum a comfortable rhythm in the depths of the night. He furls away from you, a gentle tug on your arms, a silent request to follow as he steps backward into the depths of your apartment. He strikes a tempo that tosses you off—a middling pace that has your feet racing ahead of your body, your mind left in the dust.

Some nights you spent together in the past weeks have been quiet, the falling into rest of two people worked to their bones. This isn’t one of those nights, there’s something far too urgent in the air. He backs himself into the soft mattress and drops his body down. He tugs gently on your arm, pulling you just enough off balance that you have to catch yourself on the bed with your knee. The corner of his lips curls up into a smile as he skims his hands beneath your shirt and tugs it over your head before letting you do the same to his. 

You meet his lips in a kiss, sugar-spun and chaste before stepping back and shedding the rest of your clothes in front of him. His hands still over his belt buckle as he watches you, eyes wide as you reveal the bare expanses of soft skin to him. He stares, almost awestruck as you shift your weight in front of him. You’ve been naked in front of him before, of course, but something feels different tonight, standing in your own bedroom as he gapes at you, mouth hanging open like he can’t believe his eyes. You shift again, reaching with one hand across the front of your belly to grab your elbow, a self-comforting gesture, a way to hide the way you feel stripped bare and exposed. 

He almost shakes himself off as he returns to the moment, and with military expediency he strips the tan fabric of his khakis and his underwear down his legs and settles with his back against your headboard. His cock curves up toward his stomach, dark and angry. He must be desperate, but instead, as he holds out a hand for you, his demeanor is calm, collected, comforting, as though he’s asking for no more than a simple dance. 

He pulls you down into his lap, gently arranging your knees on either side of his thighs. He grabs your cheeks and tips your face down to meet his, square and firm. 

“I am not ashamed of you.” He insists, dipping his head to meet your eyes when you flick your eyes away to avoid his strict gaze. “ _I am not hiding you._ ” 

You nod, feeling the burning tears well at the corners of your eyes. His thumb swipes over your cheek and wipes them away as he offer you a gentle smile. He runs his hands down your arms to curl around your hips, and he shifts under you, lining himself up with your center. He moves beneath you, a gentle pressure as he pulls you toward him and fills you slowly, inch by agonizing inch. Your breathy exhales merge and marry with his in the dark as you surrender to the delicious stretch of him within you. 

He guides you to rise and fall on top of him until the room overflows with his quiet grunts and the soft gasps tumbling out of your own mouth. His grip around your waist is firm but gentle as you roll with one another, crashing together like the tide lapping gently at a peaceful shoreline, slow and steady, and right. He fits inside you perfectly, pressing a slow hot pressure dark and low within you. It’s not explosive, not frantic or fevered. This isn’t a frenzied rush to completion. You’re not chasing a high or succumbing to desperate animal instincts. You just _are_. 

In turn, he’s a comforting presence beneath you, steady as the ground you walk on—sturdier even. He provides a strong foundation to rest your weight on, a concrete base to build up and up, and you’re not sure how you ever doubted him. His breath blooms a dizzying bouquet of hot flowers against your skin as he gasps, not bothering to hide or mask his pleasure as you crash together. You find a slow comforting rhythm of bodies merging, devouring and surrendering in equal measure.

This is solace, an expression of some deep buried thought, some feeling that neither of you are quite yet ready to admit. It lingers in the darkest corners of your mind, hopping from shadow to shadow, and you turn away from it, even as it haunts you in the dark. You can even see the silhouette of it reflected in the blackness of his eyes as he stares up at you, jaw slack and eyes wet with dumbfounded wonder as though you’re an angel sent to answer his prayers.

You throw your head back as the first of the cresting waves overtakes you, a rolling, roiling sensation uncurling deep within you like the shifting of earth. It coils outward, spiraling and spinning until no piece of you is hidden by shadow and _all_ of you is consumed by the blinding light that washes across your entire body. 

His arms curl around you as you shake, a welcome and necessary support as your world shatters above him. He catches the raining pieces of you and carefully reassembles them in his arms, a gentle hush escaping his lips as he gathers you tight to his chest. You feel him throb beneath you, and you bear down on him, clench around him and nod. Words fail, but your message is clear. He wraps himself around you and squeezes, rendering you immobile in his lap as he thrusts himself up into you, face buried in your chest until he comes with a cry. 

He comes back to himself slowly, the vice grip of his arms uncurling bit by bit until you’re free to lean back and look down at his face. He’s not smiling, not really, but joy dances in his expression all the same, a soft glow flickering in his warm eyes. 

He doesn’t say anything. Neither do you. The words aren’t important. Or rather, they’re not _done_ yet, not ready to step out into the light. But you can see in his face that you understand each other, and in his eyes you see the mirror image of the specter that haunts you, lingering just out of reach.

For now, that’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can be found [on my tumblr here](https://mandoplease.tumblr.com/post/632366045529849856/definitions-olive-branches-pt-4) as well.


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